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sorry if this has already been covered(i couldnt find a thread). but ive just come back to gaming and noticed the harlequins are back minus the solitare and mimes.
anybody know why?
sorry if this seems a stupid question,but i havent touched 40k for 2 or 3 years.
cheers

The Solitaire is a Fluff contradiction, so he doesn't appear in mass battles, which is where the current Eldar Codex is designed. If he were to return, he'd be a Special Character of some sort.

Mimes simply fold back into the basic Harlequin entry.

papakeef wrote:sorry if this has already been covered(i couldnt find a thread). but ive just come back to gaming and noticed the harlequins are back minus the solitare and mimes.
anybody know why?
sorry if this seems a stupid question,but i havent touched 40k for 2 or 3 years.
cheers

Ahh...

They constantly battle to rescue the Squats from the the Lost and the Damned cults in the parallel dimension of "forgotten", as they were banished by the "creators".

Sad to see the old ideas wiped out sometimes isn't it? It's a bigger list the longer you play.

I use to have a unit of jetbike Eldar that I used harlequin rider conversions on and I called them Mimes! I suppose a counts as Autarch could be a fine solitaire as well couldn't he?

Good luck!

yeah shame, as a solitaire would pretty much rip anyone a new hole.

Agreed. Back in second edition I had a solitaire in my Eldar army, and that along with Jain Zar were the two things that my space marine opponents trembled over. They also hated my Boneseers. (Citadel Journal ruled back in the olden times!)

Soooo what did the solitaire look like? Why was it so awesome? Tell me more!

An Eldar Solitaire was like an Eversor on steroids...

I thought Eversors were on steroids?

I'd liken it more to an Eversor who's just taken his body-weight in PCP.

I had to convert mine, so I used a standard harlie with lots of bitz. it ended up with some sort of big gun and a killer close combat weapon. I liked the challenge of converting Eldar after having Orks, because you actually have to be neat.

Solitaires still get a mention in the current Codex, so they've not disappeared from the fluff. Maybe they'll make a Sly Marbo style return to the elite section next time around. They are one of my many fond memories from 2nd Edition.

Flashman wrote:Solitaires still get a mention in the current Codex, so they've not disappeared from the fluff. Maybe they'll make a Sly Marbo style return to the elite section next time around. They are one of my many fond memories from 2nd Edition.

Solitaires will never return, Sly Marbo killed them all with their own cards as he fought his way out of the Squat dimension.

Noisy_Marine wrote:Soooo what did the solitaire look like? Why was it so awesome? Tell me more!

The RT one was fairly anonymous in appearance. He's the middle of the bottom row in the first picture, and number 8 in the second.

http://www.solegends.com/citrt/rtb06harlequins.htm

Im sure people miss uber killer units like that from the olden days. Honestly Im glad they dont do those so much anymore. Like the SW rune priests. Dear lord those things were SO over powered

You think the loss of Solitaires is bad, try coping with losing the rules for Traitor Legions.

Harlequins weren't in the previous codex (or the Craftworld Eldar expansion for that matter) at all.
There was an "experimental" Harlequin-only army codex available which did include Solitaires.
So there was an incarnation of the Solitaire available for play as recently as 2 years ago.
Once the latest Eldar codex came out, it reintroduced Harlies into the core army but left Solitaires as fluff-only.

considering the fluff, i wonder what its stats would be and if it would be the most powerful eldar?
after all it would be the only eldar to lose its soul to slaneesh as a trade off.

warpcrafter wrote:Agreed. Back in second edition I had a solitaire in my Eldar army, and that along with Jain Zar were the two things that my space marine opponents trembled over. They also hated my Boneseers. (Citadel Journal ruled back in the olden times!)

I never knew they had rules for Boneseers.

Personally, I think Yirel (sp) or what ever that special character autarch is would make a pretty decent "counts as" solitare.

storm gaurdians could do decent although not perfect mimes.

what, cos he's mental?

utan wrote:Harlequins weren't in the previous codex (or the Craftworld Eldar expansion for that matter) at all.
There was an "experimental" Harlequin-only army codex available which did include Solitaires.
So there was an incarnation of the Solitaire available for play as recently as 2 years ago.
Once the latest Eldar codex came out, it reintroduced Harlies into the core army but left Solitaires as fluff-only.

The Citadel journal list was written for 3rd ed, so the stats would still be roughly comparable. The expansion even included wraithlords (controlled by the stolen soul of a solitaire - Cegorach sometimes manages to steal the soul out from under Slaanesh's grasp - it's like a game.)
In 3rd, the Solitaire was a combat monster, but would be somewhat nerfed by the no-consolidate-into-combat rule of 5th ed.

yes, its just a shame that a character(solitaire) was created that even the harlequins were uneasy,frightened and in awe of and a new model and rules were not produced to do him justice.
after all the space marines have plenty of overpowered specials.

I was surprised to see it gone as well when I read the Eldar codex not to long ago.

Its almost like the DA's loosing Hunt the Fallen..... ALMOST.

whilst on the subject of lost/forgotten minis, any thoughts on ghost/spirit warriors? cant remember the fluff but they seem to have evolved into the wraithguards and lords.

Ghost warriors grew up and became wraithguard.
Spirit warriors were merged with the dreadnoughts and became the "wraithlords" from 3e onwards.

Ghost warriors were cool. They were made of an even more stealthy version of wraithbone called "stelthene" that artificial sensors couldn't see (with the exception of tendril sensors), and natural (mk1 eyeball) senses only spotted them within 'I' distance in inches.

They were little assassin-bots.

Spirit Warriors were controlled by a spirit stone (then called the "infinity circuit") instead of a living pilot (dreadnought) and had a dccw and one heavy weapon (standard for the 'Vampire' class was a heavy plasma gun).

yes i have one of each, and my ghost warrior is painted in the same colour scheme as the harlequin wraithlord i have posted in the gallery. lovely little model with chainfist and head mounted flamer.

I still have my RED book (RT 40k compendium) which I flick through when the current edition seems so thin and transparent and lacking fluff.

That's where I dug up the ghost/spirit warrior stuff from. It was a compilation of a lot of WD articles (including the harlequin army background and list).

How is the Solitaire a fluff contradiction?
He was my favorite Eldar back then, because of his fluff.
I guess Slaanesh finally got his soul, uh?

A Solitaire is Soulless, so he is Pariah.

But he lives anonymously among Craftworld Eldar.

If Eldar are Psyker-sensitive, with loads of high-power Psyers, how is this possible?

well,depends on what fluff youre reading.
the stuff ive read says he has a soul and when he dies slannesh claims it. sometimes the laughing god tricks slannesh and saves the solitaires soul.
it is the solitaires extreme mental fortitude(living with the knowledge of damnation for one thing)that makes him able to move amongst the eldar(and other psycics) unnoticed.

A solitaire is not soulless.
His soul is promised to Slaanesh upon death - only sometimes Cegorach manages to snaffle it back from under slaanesh's nose (nipple? Other dangly bits?).

He stands apart from eldar society (and indeed, does not even travel with the masque, it is just a fortuitous coincidence when he and a masque are in the same place/time) travelling alone.

This alone may make him a social pariah, but not a *null* pariah.